Negotiation & gender
Feb. 22nd, 2006 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietI was pointed at this piece about how gender affects salary negotiation by a mailing list I'm on.
In general, there's evidence that women tend to be less good at negotiating salary than men do, & this has some interesting stuff about why that might be.
I was particularly interested in the experiment they discuss where they compared negotiating ability when negotiating for oneself as opposed to negotiating for someone else. Not only did the women (unlike the men) do significantly better when negotiating for someone else, but then men only did as well as the women negotiating for themselves (i.e. men_for_self = men_for_other = women_for_self < women_for_other). In other words, these women (in these set of circumstances) did not suffer. I'm actually slightly surprised by this as it contradicts what is said further up the article (that women negotiate lower salaries in highly ambiguous situations (as in the experiment), & it also seems to contradict the next para where they talk about women 'not [feeling] less entitled to a good salary'. Assuming there's no typo; I wonder if the artificial nature of the situation had an effect.
Anyway, more interesting really is the 18% difference when negotiating on behalf of someone else. My immediate speculation is whether this is to do with socialised modesty - which would be much less relevant if you're negotiating with someone else. Or objective self-analysis, which is closely connected with modesty (but not entirely so: you can believe, correctly or otherwise, that you are Teh Greatest but be reluctant to say so publicly).
More practically: I want a payrise in the summer, so maybe I need to start practicing not being modest...
In general, there's evidence that women tend to be less good at negotiating salary than men do, & this has some interesting stuff about why that might be.
I was particularly interested in the experiment they discuss where they compared negotiating ability when negotiating for oneself as opposed to negotiating for someone else. Not only did the women (unlike the men) do significantly better when negotiating for someone else, but then men only did as well as the women negotiating for themselves (i.e. men_for_self = men_for_other = women_for_self < women_for_other). In other words, these women (in these set of circumstances) did not suffer. I'm actually slightly surprised by this as it contradicts what is said further up the article (that women negotiate lower salaries in highly ambiguous situations (as in the experiment), & it also seems to contradict the next para where they talk about women 'not [feeling] less entitled to a good salary'. Assuming there's no typo; I wonder if the artificial nature of the situation had an effect.
Anyway, more interesting really is the 18% difference when negotiating on behalf of someone else. My immediate speculation is whether this is to do with socialised modesty - which would be much less relevant if you're negotiating with someone else. Or objective self-analysis, which is closely connected with modesty (but not entirely so: you can believe, correctly or otherwise, that you are Teh Greatest but be reluctant to say so publicly).
More practically: I want a payrise in the summer, so maybe I need to start practicing not being modest...
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Date: 2006-02-28 12:58 pm (UTC)So, my short response - good point (while the thought of enforcing modesty on men amused me in a definitely non-work-safe way!), though I am wary of gender solutions which encourage women to be 'more like men', bcos the masculine is the human ideal. I'm not saying that was your solution, of course, just that it's an idea worth bearing in mind.
Still, even if it's a good idea for me and many others to be more assertive, that doesn't actually make it feasible...